Kathy Kelly: The Cost of War, the Price of Peace; Eyewitness Reports from Afghanistan

Wednesday, April 16, 7:00p.m. at RCNV 612 Ocean St.

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.

During each of nine recent trips to Afghanistan, Kathy Kelly, as an invited guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, has lived alongside ordinary Afghan people in a working class neighborhood in Kabul. Voices for Creative Nonviolence believe that “where you stand determines what you see.” They are resolved not to let war sever the bonds of friendship between them and Afghan people whom they’ve grown to know. They insist that the U.S. is not waging a “humanitarian war” in Afghanistan. Kelly has actively protested drone warfare by holding demonstrations outside of numerous U.S. military bases. From 1996 – 2003, Voices delegations openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing. They have also lived alongside people during warfare in Gaza, Lebanon, Bosnia and Nicaragua. Kathy was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and spent three months in prison, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. As a war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all forms of federal income tax since 1980.